Major new features of Moodle by Version

This article shows the major new feature releases of each version of Moodle. Each new version of Moodle builds off older version features so the most latest version will contain features from the oldest to newest version. The features listed in this article are directly from moodle.org.

As of Moodle 2.7.x

As usual Moodle HQ and our incredible community have brought together work from all corners of the globe to this release. Scalable, responsive and private, Moodle 2.7 is our best release yet. Here are some highlights of this release, and you can view screencasts of some of these highlights on the official MoodleHQ YouTube page: Moodle 2.7 Release Highlights Playlist.

For all users

Atto, a new, simple-to-use editor

Our new Moodle editor focuses on usability and accessibility. TinyMCE is still available, but Atto will be the best editor for most people. Learn more

Modern appearance with improved responsiveness

Moodle now uses Bootstrap themes by default for improved responsive design and usability. Many small improvements have been made all through the interface. You can find more themes in the Moodle Plugins database.

Mathematics improvements

Atto features a new mathematical equation editor, producing TeX with a WYSIWIYG interface without needing Java. This means it works everywhere, even tablets and phones. We've also added a new MathJax filter for displaying mathematical equations beautifully, without needing any special server setup. Learn more

For teachers

Enhancements to this widely used teaching feature in Moodle include an improved, streamlined interface, as well as added support to enable restricted access with "or" conditions and use nested restrictions for complex access criteria. Learn more

Improved Assignment features

Control when to notify students of feedback via a checkbox when grading individual students.

Teachers can now be assigned permissions to edit or delete student submissions.

Set a word limit, and comment and edit directly on students' online text assignments.

Easily create and manage Quiz & Question bank

As well as an updated question type selector, duplicating and moving questions is now easier, and there is an option to 'Save changes and continue editing'. Quiz reports have been improved and the Essay question now allows students simply to add an attachment with no accompanying text. Learn more

For administrators and managers

A long term support release

Moodle 2.7 is a LTS release, meaning it will have an extended support of 3 years (until May 2017) for security and data-loss fixes, twice the time of other releases. This makes it an ideal, stable platform for long-term projects.

Improved logging for better reporting

A new logging subsystem with plugins allowing detailed and external logs provides opportunities for improved reporting as well as advancements in better learning analytics. Learn more

More theme: Easily style and brand your Moodle site

'More' is a new responsive theme designed for admins to easily make basic customisations to the look and feel of their Moodle site directly, without the need for advanced technical knowledge. Learn more

Scheduled tasks management

With an improved scheduling system, tasks can be scheduled precisely, even on complex clustered servers. See Scheduled tasks for details.

Improved Events system

Events have been improved all through Moodle, allowing you to better integrate your code with Moodle. A new dynamically-generated report listing all events and event details helps administrators, researchers and developers understand the system.Learn more

Log in with your email address

A new admin setting allows users to log in not only with their normal username but also with their email address.

As of Moodle 2.6.x

Moodle 2.6 brings a lot of exciting new features for teachers, students and administrators.

Conveniently allocate student assignments to different markers, and control when marks are released to individual students.

Certainty-based marking in Quizzes now provides improved feedback for learners.

Dynamic, streamlined, course management

Quickly edit course activities and resources across all devices.

Easily add a Single activity course format.

1. Annotate uploaded PDF files in browser

Provide feedback directly within PDF file submissions by using a variety of annotating tools available, including stamps and phrases from a comment bank.

2. Enhanced marking workflow and allocation

Control when marks are released for viewing, for example, when they have been reviewed and moderated. Individual markers can also be allocated assignments and these allocations will show up clearly in the gradebook.

3. Enhanced feedback in Certainty-based marking

Quizzes using Certainty-based marking now provide better feedback for learners.

4. Easily edit course activities and resources

Editing tools have been grouped together to in a simple dropdown menu for easy accessibility across desktop and mobile devices.

5. Add a Single activity course format

Simply select and add any one activity as a standard course format which is displayed directed on the course page (This feature supersedes the old SCORM course format).

For Administrators and Managers

Enhanced platform management

Create and manage bulk courses efficiently

Simpler course and category management

Create additional name fields

Conveniently import and export role definition using XML file

Restoring of very large courses possible

1. Bulk course creation tool

Create multiple courses efficiently using a single CSV file. The functionality also extends to updating or deleting courses as well as importing content from another course.

2. Streamlined course and category management

Easily sort, create, and delete course categories in a more intuitive interface with drag and drop functionality.

3. Create additional name fields

Add and customize additional name fields to flexibly display user names in Chinese characters, local phonetic system or Ramanization.

4. Import and export role redefinitions

Export and import role definitions as XML files.New roles may be based on existing data:

role archetype

existing role

role definition XML file

5. Backup and restore large courses

Backup and restore large courses Improved performance allows users to quickly backup large courses safely and if needed, easily restore the courses for use.

For All Users

Experience a better learning platform

A more user-friendly TinyMCE editor

Easily access files from Microsoft Skydrive.

Improved calendar handling with multiple calendar support

Simplified username and password recovery

Improved file management in TinyMCE editor

Better responsive design across devices

1. A more user-friendly TinyMCE editor

The improved TinyMCE editor can be resized to suit various browser widths, and features user-friendly icons and a collapsible toolbar menu.

2. Access files from Microsoft Skydrive

Users can now choose to retrieve files from their Skydrive account for use in their Moodle courses.

3. Improved calendar handling with multiple calendar support

Moodle 2.6 supports and displays the same date in multiple calendar system, including Gregorian, Hebrew, Islamic and more, so you can select a preferred calendar system.

4. Simplified username and password recovery

Quickly retrieve username or reset password in a simpler, more user-friendly process.

5. Improve file management in TinyMCE editor

Add and manage files previously embedded in a text area with the new TinyMCE Manage Embedded files plugin and Embedded files repository.

6. Better responsive design

Moodle works and looks better across all devices, including desktops, tablets and phones.

As of Moodle 2.5.x

Moodle 2.5 brings a lot of exciting new features for teachers, students and administrators. This section highlights a few of the most interesting.

For Teachers and Students:

Badges are a nice way to acknowledge good work, and it's now possible for teachers to award course badges based on a variety of chosen criteria. These badges are fully compatible with Mozilla Open Badges.

Teacher sets up a badge

Student view of allocated badges

Badges from backpack.openbadges.org on student profile

This blog post has some interesting reflection on when badges might be most appropriate: The Badges of Oz

Forms are much shorter

Moodle has a lot of settings and features, which means some of our forms have been getting rather long. We know this is daunting for new users!

We've made changes so that non-essential settings on forms are collapsed by default, yet you can quickly access them when you need them.

Note the "expand all" option and condensed links

"Show more" (and "show less" options

The rich text editor is collapsed and can be expanded:

Formatting options collapsed and box is narrow

Formatting options shown and box expanded

In a similar space-saver, you can choose whether or not to enable the rich text editor when creating quiz questions:

Without the editing tools

With the editing tools

Reports moved to the Administration block

Reports have moved and can now be seen in the newly named Administration block, (formerly Settings.)

Administration block with Reports

Quickly "Jump to.." another section

If you're using the 'one section per page' setting, you can now move to other sections from a drop down menu:

The 'jump to' drop down menu returns

Drag and drop media and text onto the course page

You can now drag an image or some text onto your course page and choose whether to display it embedded in a label or as a clickable resource. See the Label documentation for more information.

Drag an image onto your course page

Choose "add image.."

And here it is!

Text selected from a Word document is dragged over

Choose "add a label" (or page if you prefer)

And here it is!

Folders can be displayed inline on a course page

You can now choose whether to have a folder show its contents in a separate screen, as previously, or to have it display them inline with any subfolders expanded:

Typical folder display before 2.5

Folder displayed inline

Folder displayed inline with subfolders expanded

Assignment enhancements

Along with neater options for choosing submission and feedback types, resubmitting options are much improved. See Assignment settings for more information.

Neater assignment set up screen

New settings for resubmissions

Word count in forum posts

A new setting in forums will display the number of words in a post:

Note word count bottom left

Templates for Essay question types

When using the Essay question type in a quiz, you can now set a template which appears in the students' text editor for scaffolding their response:

Response template in question set up screen

What the student sees

Glossary block enhancements

You can now use a global glossary in the random glossary block, and you can display the entries in alphabetical order:

Entries will display in alphabetical order

Search the list of enrolled users

A new Enrolled users search box makes finding users in very large courses much easier:

A search facility allows teachers to search for specific users.

For administrators:

New themes suited to all screen sizes

Many of your favourite sites around the web these days use Bootstrap as a base framework and now Moodle does too! We have a new 'base' theme called "Bootstrapbase" that implements the basics, and a new usable theme called 'Clean' which extends it with some simple configuration options and also functions as a good template example for developing your own Bootstrap-based themes. It also (along with Afterburner) allows you to upload a logo directly from the file picker.

The Bootstrap framework allows us to responsively reformat the layout according to the screensize of the device used - on phone or tablet screens blocks move to the bottom, freeing up space for the main content at the top. In the future we hope everyone will want to migrate their Moodle themes to be Bootstrap-based.

Clean theme on standard screen

Clean theme on smaller screen; note position of Navigation block

Add your logo from the file picker in Clean theme

Install add-ons from inside Moodle

It's now possible to install add-ons from within Moodle, rather than accessing folders on the server; useful for those admins who do not have FTP access. Add-ons can be uploaded and installed from a zip file or located and installed from the Moodle plugins directory:

Add-on install tool

Add-on passes validation; ready to go

As of Moodle 2.4.x

Performance improvementsA variety of improvements have been made under the hood to improve performance in a number of ways. Some of require configuration by the admin to take advantage of them but used properly they can allow you to make better use of your hardware for faster speed and more students.

New context index to substantially improve system performance on large PostgreSQL installations.

Improved daily statistics performance.

Significant size reduction of navigation widget.

MUC Stage 1: Implement some core caching architecture (MUC).

Database meta information caching.

Question related caching.

Performance improvement by not locking guests and not-logged-in users sessions

These results show out-of-the-box improvements without tuning or adding special MUC-supported backends (which would improve things even more).

Database usage (-19.2%)

Time used (-4.1%)

Files included (-4.5%)

KiloBytes downloaded (-15.2%)

Session size (+5.1%)

getstring() calls (-12.5%)

+0.91KB per user

(+5.1%)

General Improvements

The default icons used for activities and editing actions have been updated for the first time since Moodle 1.0. Not only are they a little bigger and more colourful but they are SVG format and support full scaling on all devices, so they always look good.

Theme - All pages are now served with HTML5 doctype by default. This allows us to improve usability, add new features, developers can use reliable iframe tag instead of broken object embedding, data attributes may simplify JavaScript code, etc.

Theme - Improved compatibility with Internet Explorer 8-10

Theme - SimpleYUI enables similar coding style to JQuery, it is intended especially for theme designers.

Cohorts can now be synchronised to course groups!

Pending expiration notification in self and manual enrolment plugins.

Self enrolment can be restricted to cohort members.

Integration of external calendars - You can now stream your external calendars (such as Google Calendar, or a calendar from another Moodle site) into Moodle's calendar via the iCal standard

Assignment enhancements - Group assignments - It will now be possible to set an assignment which a group can work on collaboratively -and receive a common (or individual) grade.

Assignment enhancements - Blind marking i.e. not knowing the identity of students when grading. Students' names will be replaced by randomly generated Participant numbers.

Assignment enhancements - Submission date extensions - Teachers can set a cut-off date (and time) beyond which submissions will no longer be accepted. They can also grant extensions for those who miss the deadline.

Assignment enhancements - Submission statement - It will be possible to set a submission statement so students have to check a box promising their work is original before submitting it.

Assignment enhancements - Offline marking - Teachers can download all assignments plus the grading sheet, view, grade and give feedback offline and then upload back to Moodle and have the grades/files/comments transferred into Moodle's gradebook.

As of Moodle 2.3.x

A nicer-looking file picker with fewer clicks

Images now display as true thumbnails in the file picker and file manager.

Other files have pretty icons for most file types.

Files view can be easily toggled between icons view or a table view with sizes and dates, or a hierarchical list view.

You can now drag and drop files directly from your desktop straight into file areas!

Files can be created as "aliases/shortcuts" of other files. This allows you to, for example, use a single file in your private files area multiple times in all your courses. If you update the original file then all the aliases will automatically update!

Aliases are easily identifiable in the file manager interface.

New EQUELLA repository enabling users to make aliases (shortcuts) to EQUELLA files.

If a repository supports it then it's possible to make an alias/shortcut to a file in an external repository. If the file is updated in the repository, then this change is reflected in Moodle. The file remains under Moodle access control however, and the original URL is not usually revealed. In the 2.3 core release, this is supported by private files, server files, file system, Box.net and EQUELLA repositories.

Blocks can be dragged and dropped around the page (again)

You can edit the name of any activity or resource directly on the course page without entering the settings (works particularly well with drag and drop).

Complete rewrite of the assignment module from scratch

Assignment subtypes are no longer needed.

The most popular third-party resource module ever, Book finally joins core. Welcome!

New SCORM graph report

Option to make the workshop switch to the assessment phase automatically after the submissions deadline (including automatic allocation of submissions for assessment)

Workshop submission deadlines are shown in the calendar

Improved support for pagination and filtering workshop submissions by group